What Does it Mean to Put Love Into Your Cooking?

Happy Cooking
Photo by Jason Briscoe on Unsplash

When it comes to cooking a delicious meal, you often hear the phrase that a chef “put their love into it”. But what exactly does this mean? Is this just a goofy phrase to add a little bit of dramatic flair to the dining experience? Or is there something more to it? Here’s what it means to put love into your cooking, and why it makes all the difference in the world.

The Bare Minimum

In all the different things we do in life, a person is given a choice. Are they going to do the bare minimum, or are they going to go above and beyond? The spirit behind doing the bare minimum means that a person followed the rules. They did everything they were supposed to do, right? No one can fault a person for doing the bare minimum, because they can always point to the rulebook, or the recipe book, and claim that they did their job.

Going Above and Beyond

However, while doing the bare minimum can technically produce good results, these results are fake and devoid of love and passion. When you do a task out of love and not out of requirement, you go above and beyond. You take an interest in the little things. You put in the extra hours to ensure that the final result is exactly how you want it to be. In conclusion, putting love into a recipe isn’t something that can be quantifiably measured—and yet it’s also the very thing that makes a good recipe great.